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San Antonio educating the next generation of cyber defenders

When I think about all the different activities happening in May, graduations are some of the most exciting events, and I’m reminded of Dr. Seuss’ book, “Oh the Places You’ll Go.”

Thanks to the education provided at our many colleges and universities, San Antonio graduates will go to great places. Mayor Castro kicked off celebrations for San Antonio’s first-ever College Week last week, and I was reminded about the unique opportunities the colleges and universities right here in San Antonio provide our future leaders.

One such opportunity is The Institute for Cyber Security, which was created at UTSA in 2007. The Institute was created as the demand grew for qualified professionals in this area, and San Antonio continues to see cyber security as one of its fastest-growing industries.

Just this month, UTSA’s College of Sciences graduated six students with cyber security focused studies. The College of Business had 30 bachelor degree graduates and 15 master degree graduates with cyber security specialties.

These students received a one-of-a-kind education by some of the nation’s most elite experts. UTSA is recognized by the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security as a Center for Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education (CAE). UTSA is also one of the few schools to hold the prestigious CAE-R designation, where the R stands for research. The CAE-R program in information assurance aims to increase the understanding of robust technologies, policies and practices through research to enable the U.S. to effectively prevent or respond to a catastrophic cyber event.

The Institute has filed patents for innovative technology developed here and innovations developed by ICS researchers are widely recognized and practiced in industry today.

In February of this year UTSA faculty and staff members lent their expertise to an elite group of government, academic and industry professionals at the winter meeting of the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable (GUIRR), an elite sub-group of the National Academies, the nation’s advisers in science, engineering and medicine.

The topic was “Cyber security in the Coming Decade: Using Security to Support the Value of Intellectual Property.” Experts from the White House, FBI, Google, IBM, Northrop Grumman and University of California, Berkeley as well as other academic institutions and industry organizations attended.

Ravi Sandhu, a world-renowned expert in cyber security and executive director of the UTSA Institute for Cyber Security and Lutcher Brown Endowed Chair in Cyber Security, addressed the realities that network attackers, defenders and technology developers face on a daily basis, calling for policies to balance productivity and security and an increasing focus on cyber security research and education to meet the nation’s future technology needs.

Through roundtable meetings and projects, GUIRR partners provided guidance and suggested possible solutions to streamline policies and procedures unique to the government-university-industry interface. This counsel, often documented in advisory reports, is distributed to key national leaders including President Obama.

Cyber security is just one example of many throughout San Antonio where we have some of the country’s greatest minds training the leaders of tomorrow. So, to all our graduates, in the words of Dr. Seuss…“Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So…get on your way!”